Didactic Resources: Pre-Technological or Technological.
Throughout history, education has been changed, adapted, adopted, and created in order to improve the way students learn in the classrooms. This occurs due to the need to implement new strategies, methods, activities, and some materials that are essential to maintain a high quality in the level of the education. The use of the boards, chalk, books, newspapers, and other old but useful pre-technological materials have been used to teach different subject matters. Nowadays, the implementation of technology has let new opportunities to update or to have new alternatives in the way a professor teaches. However, there is a controversy because some people argue pre-technological materials are better than the technological ones while others think the other way around. None of these didactic resources is more useful or useless than the other one because both have benefits and disadvantages in teaching.
First, it is essential to clarify what resources mean. According to the professor Oscar García they “are any instrument that help us to achieve any goal; that is, any auxiliar material with which the pupils develop the learning process” (1996). This concept has its own characteristics that contribute for having a more appropriate way to teach. The advantages these materials provide can change depending on the region, school, students’ knowledge, teachers’ preparation, curriculum organization, and other aspects that facilitate or make harder the acquisition of a language.
First of all, materials that do not need special technological devices to be applied seem to be boring for some students mainly if they are used at certain hours or in topics that are not appropriate to include them. On the contrary, technological materials, which are very integrative, encourage learners to keep moving, and they help to maintain students’ attention focused in the practices, activities, or other tasks. Although, if there is a problem with the equipment or with the internet connection, it would be almost impossible to utilize these resources in the classroom.
There is also the problem of reliability which deals with the implementation of methods and other strategies according to the curriculum of any institution and whose objective is to assess students in a fair way based on what the professor actually taught. It is viable that pre-technological resources are more reliable that technological materials since students are accustomed to the traditional techniques used throughout the history of education. In contrast, technological resources seem to be less suitable when a student is evaluated because some of the learners can have learning problems or present trouble in accessing or using diverse technological equipment.
Consequently, the capacity a student and an institution have to access to technology varies in the geographical location they are (i.e. urban or rural areas.) The problem is that many rural educational institutions do not have the same equipment an urban area has mainly because the budget given to education is first delivered in the most relevant schools, high schools, and universities. Hence, these rural institutes have to teach, most of the time, using pre-technological resources, and they have the similar results an urban institution shows by integrating technology in the classrooms. Another argument is related with the professor’s preparation to use a variety of methods. Unfortunately, teachers, sometimes, do not even know how to plan or teach a lesson applying the traditional resources, but there are others who really have learned to integrate different devices in the teaching process.
The use of technology and pre-technological resources has shown they have some benefits as well as disadvantages. Both have been implemented to guarantee a successful learning process. Combining them will bring the student along the path way of learning a new language (Bellas, 2006). Also, they can be used to develop an integrative, innovative, and reliable method to assess students’ performance in the classrooms. None of them is better than the other one because there are many factors such as environment, access, learners’ needs, institutions’ curriculum, and the like which hinder or affect the implementation of these materials to teach any topic. Finally, it is essential to clarify that many times the problem is not the method but the instructor; it means that depending on the situation or topic, the professor is the only one who will decide the appropriate technique that have to be applied it does not matter if it is a pre-technological or technological resource.
Works Cited.
Bellas, George. (2006) What Do High Tech and Traditional ESL Teaching Methods
Do For Students? Accelerate Their Learning! ESL Teachers Board: USA.
Retrieved from: http://www.eslteachersboard.com.
García, Oscar. (1996) Didactic Resources For Teaching English. University of
Sevilla: Spain. Retrieved from: http://osqvar.iespana.es
